How do you read the word "Puke?" It depends on what language you assign to the word--Te Reo Maori or English. This article discusses this politics of "assigning language" and what epistemological and historical contexts shape that process, based on the author's ethnographic fieldwork at a secondary school in Aotearoa/New…

Translanguaging has recently gained much currency in second language (L2) education. While the conceptualization of this theory stems from the goal of enhancing L2 education for learners, one challenge scholars have underlined is the need for more responsive, practical classroom activities consistent with translanguaging principles and stance.…

This paper contributes to southern theorization of multilingualisms. Noting the predominance of northern-generated academic debates, we discuss perspectives from close engagement with southern socio-historical and political contexts, and through prioritizing community and teacher outlooks on multilingualism. Our account is illustrated with…

'Translanguaging' has become the most popular term in discussions about how to use learners' languages as resources for target language teaching/learning, but it has also become ambiguous because it is being developed in proposals adopting different perspectives on multilingualism. The first aim of this article is to offer an overview of the two…

In today's globalised and networked life ecologies, the language socialisation and literacy experiences of children around the globe are increasingly multilingual. Children encounter new languages early on in kindergarten and school and many children speak home languages other than the community language. Science and education have a joint…

This article investigates linguistic practices related to students' social and academic lives -- something that has been overlooked in the research literature on international schooling and elite boarding schools. Pierre Bourdieu reminds us that language has a social dimension linked to relations of symbolic power. Boarding schools serve as…

Few studies have investigated current English-medium Instruction (EMI) programmes for international students studying in universities in China's mainland. The present study applies Spolsky's language policy framework to analyze Chinese EMI programmes in terms of language ideology, language management, and language practices on the national level,…

In a series of articles critical of aspects of the idea of translanguaging, MacSwan (e.g. 2022) has suggested that "deconstructivism" has derailed the translingual project. This paper draws attention to a number of weaknesses in this argument that are important for taking critical questions about language seriously. The term…

This article theorizes translanguaging as a space of simultaneity to analyze how teachers use translanguaging to create a multilingual classroom space and engage students with their multilingual identities and epistemologies in the classroom. The data in this article are drawn from an ethnographic study of language policies and practices in a…

The idea of translanguaging has disrupted much of the thinking in bilingual education. A common misunderstanding, however, is that translanguaging was intended to be a language teaching strategy. This article seeks to explore what a translanguaging approach to language teaching entails, with specific reference to the education of minoritized and…

Multilingual education is an urgent and pressing concern in the Indian educational scenario. While the National Education Policy (2020) acknowledges multilingualism as a resource in educational contexts and reiterates earlier policies calling for mother tongue-based education in elementary classrooms, it does not provide guidance in terms of how…

Linguistic heterogeneity and fluidity--prominently captured in the notion of 'translanguaging'-- are starting to be seen as normative and natural. In turn, homogeneity and fixity, instantiated for example in standard languages, are becoming the 'odd-ones-out.' I challenge the dichotomy between linguistic fluidity (languaging) and fixity (named…

In this conceptual paper, we explore the opportunities and challenges that translanguaging may provide for students from Australian Aboriginal backgrounds and their teachers. We use examples taken from Australian Aboriginal students who may speak Standard Australian English, Australian Aboriginal English, creoles (Kriol being the common one across…

Education policy in the Global South often focuses on two areas: learner-centred education (LCE) and language of instruction (LoI). For over a decade, LCE has been promoted throughout sub-Saharan Africa and has been referred to as a 'policy panacea'. The basic premise of LCE is that it offers learners substantial control over what and how they…

The relationship between language switching and task switching has been well studied in bilingualism literature. This study employs novel experiments involving magnitude-parity switching and transparency-orientation switching and compares the costs associated with these two types of task switching with language switching. Switching costs and the…